Christy Mihaly

George Washington at the Battle of Trenton
engraving by the Illman Brothers, 1870

Some mistakes have big repercussions. IMPERFECT poet Christy Mihaly wrote a poem for the Team Imperfect blog about a military mistake:

The men who celebrated
became inebriated,
their stomachs fully sated,
oblivious to threats;

then in their camp at Trenton
commenced their slow descent in-
to sleep, in this event in
our early history.

[The mistake-makers here are the Hessian soldiers camped at Trenton, NJ, who celebrated Christmas a little too hard as General George Washington and his troops crossed the Delaware River to attack them, Dec. 25-26, 1776, in a great victory for the Continental Army.]

CHRISTY MIHALY writes in Vermont at a pine table overlooking forests and fields. The activities in those fields inspired her first picture book, HEY, HEY, HAY! (A Tale of Bales and the Machines that Make Them), illustrated by Joe Cepeda (Holiday House, 2018). Christy is a member of the Poets' Garage, an online community of people who write verse for children. As a founding member of GROG, the group blog for writers and readers of children’s literature, Christy blogs about books and the writing life. She also creates ELA exercises for an online educational company, which is great writing practice and pays better than poetry. She has published articles, stories, activities, and poetry in children's magazines. Her poem for writers, "Muse," appeared in the SCBWI Bulletin in 2014. She has, in addition, amassed a tall stack of rejections.